Shots for the Half-Shot

Doctors announced the arrival of vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine), a new member of the prolific B family of vitamins, back in 1934. But like anxious parents of a balky child, they scarcely knew what to do with it. They found B-6 in such various substances as rice bran, liver, yeast, egg yolks and cereals. They even learned how to manufacture it themselves. Working with lab animals, they came to suspect that it might be a control factor in such diseases as hardening of the arteries and even cancer. But nobody found much use for it except as an antidote for radiation sickness, e.g., following an overdose of X rays.

Last week in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Victor P. Wordsworth reported that B-6 can also cure a much more common complaint: an overdose of alcohol. "A typical case," wrote Wordsworth, "was a woman of 45, brought in singing, swearing and staggering." She was given a 100-mg. hypodermic shot of B6. "The results were far more dramatic than I anticipated . . . Three minutes [later] she became quiet, apologized for the trouble she had caused us, and asserted she felt quite sober. She was able to walk across the room perfectly steadily."

Dr. Wordsworth does not go so far as to suggest handy hypodermics of B-6 to be self-administered by intemperate drinkers before driving home from a party. But B-6 works so well that he is sure it should help in distinguishing between serious head injury and simple intoxication.

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